


you’re the only thing

by embersofabyss



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, and also really lonely, them growing up together just makes me really happy, yeah so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-22
Updated: 2020-01-22
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:46:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22359706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/embersofabyss/pseuds/embersofabyss
Summary: Whenever Oikawa falls, Iwaizumi’s always there to catch him.  (Or, I’m a sadist and I wrote a bunch of scenes with Oikawa crying.)
Relationships: Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru
Comments: 9
Kudos: 146





	you’re the only thing

**Author's Note:**

> And you’re the reason, the only thing that keeps me from diving off the deep end.
> 
> —Demons, Alec Benjamin

They are seven, and Tooru is crying because he fell off the tree he was climbing and got his favorite alien t-shirt torn. He also scraped his knee, but that doesn’t matter, because he ruined the shirt Hajime had picked out for his birthday present. 

“Calm down, Oikawa, it’s not that bad,” little Hajime says gruffly, gently helping him off the ground. “You’re such an ugly crier, you know.”

“B-but,” sniffs Tooru, eyes leaking, “I tore the shirt you gave me, Iwa-chan!”

“Stupid,” Hajime’s cheeks go red. He’s wrapping their arms around each other’s shoulders. “I’ll get you another one.”

Together, they walk out of the park and to Tooru’s house, to get some band-aids and cherry popsicles that stain their mouths red in the late afternoon sun. 

-

They are ten, and Tooru is crying in a bathroom stall because a group of boys called him a loser. The bathroom door slams open, and Hajime’s banging his fist on Tooru’s stall.

“Open up, Trashykawa, or I’m going to kick it open!”

“H-how did you know I was in here?”

“Saito told me you were in here crying. Open the door, Crappykawa!” Those words were followed by a particularly aggressive bang on the door. 

Silence. 

“...Iwa-chan, am I a loser?”

“Is that what they told you?”

A sniffle answers him. 

“No, Tooru,” Hajime sighs. The sigh makes him sound much too old for a fifth grader, and Tooru would’ve told him so if he wasn’t crying. “You’re good at everything you do, and you’re great at volleyball. Honestly...this might sound cheesy, but you could probably do anything you put you mind to.”

“Aww, Iwa-chan, you’re such a softie!” Tooru teases with a hiccup. 

“If you weren’t crying, I’d hit you.”

“I’m not crying! Rude!”

In the end, Hajime stays leaning on the door, and Tooru stays on the toilet seat, each feeling that the other being there means the world to them.

-

“Iwa-chan, do you think I’ll ever be better than Kageyama?”

It’s one am, and Tooru’s visiting his aunt with his family for the week. But here he is, after a particularly bad nightmare, calling Hajime. 

“Dumbass. You’re lucky I’m too far away to punch you.”

Tooru finds himself smiling under his blankets. “You miss me,” he says confidently. 

“You called me first, Shittykawa.”

“Details, details.”

They’re laughing and talking until 4 am, and Tooru forgets all about his nightmare. Hajime hangs up with a promise to punch Tooru when he gets back.

Tooru’s completely exhausted the next day, but if that was the price for talking to Hajime, it was worth it.

-

**SHITTYKAWA**

(3:02 am)

_iwa-chan, i had a nightmare ;-;_

**SHITTYKAWA** (3:02 am)

_iwa-chan, im scared_

**IWA-CHAN♥︎** (3:03 am)

_youre such a baby shittykawa_

**IWA-CHAN♥︎** (3:04 am)

_im going back to sleep._

But fifteen minutes later, Hajime's knocking at Tooru's door.

-

High school starts, and Tooru’s as blindingly popular as ever. He joins the volleyball team with Hajime, and everything becomes a new sort of normal.

Tooru’s allowed to date this year, and he quickly picks the prettiest girl in Aoba Johsai. Hajime barely has any time to get jealous, or wonder why he was jealous, because as soon as the relationship begins, it ends in a flurry of the poor girl’s tears, and Tooru gains a reputation among his friends as a heartbreaker.

Hajime learns not to pay too much attention to his best friend’s relationships—Tooru has a new one practically every week. They don’t matter much to each of them. 

So he finds he doesn’t know Tooru had a stable relationship with a girl for a long time, until Tooru calls him after dinner sobbing, asking him to come over.

Hajime finds him curled up on his couch, crying into a tub of strawberry ice cream.

“What the hell happened to you?” 

“Ichika dumped me!” Tooru sniffles. He’s still the same crier as he was when he was seven, snot and tears mixing together on his face. Sometimes Hajime wonders what those girls see in him.

“Who?”

And so Hajime learns every detail about Tooru’s two month long relationship with one of the pretty first-years, a girl with black hair in twin braids and an innocent, agreeable countenance. 

He learns how she can bake heavenly sweets and has a habit of pulling her braids when she gets nervous. She sounds pretty and sweet and completely forgettable in Hajime’s opinion, but maybe he’s just bitter because he can feel a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, something like jealousy, but he’d never admit it. 

But Tooru doesn’t make it sound like he cared about the relationship itself. In fact, Hajime thinks it sounds just like all of his other flings. And he tells Tooru that bluntly. 

“But Iwa-chan, of course I care about her!” Tooru looks offended. Hajime knows he’s acting. He’s so full of shit. 

Silence, a pause.

Tooru sighs. “She said...she said she felt like I didn’t really care about her, that I was in love with someone else. She said it was really noticeable, but she tried to ignore it and pretend like nothing was wrong because she liked me a lot. She said it hurt her that I kept talking about that person, and hanging around that person, and telling that person things, more than her. She felt like she was being compared.”

_I’m scared, Iwa-chan._

And even though Hajime doesn’t completely understand, and feeling a strange twisting feeling in the pit of his stomach, he sighs and rolls his eyes. “You’re so full of shit, Trashykawa.”

And Tooru sniffles and smiles through his tears, and Hajime thinks that even though he knows that Tooru would one day find someone and leave him, he can bear it, because it’s moments like these that are everything.

-

It’s their second year of high school, and Tooru finds himself practicing jump serves again and again, just like he did in middle school, until its eleven thirty and he drags himself out of the gym and into the club room. 

The club room, with Hajime sleeping on his English notebook, a pencil in hand. 

“Iwa-chan?”

Hajime startles awake. 

“Finally done, Shittykawa?” He mumbles. 

“Yeah...” Tooru tells himself not to think about how good Hajime looked asleep, with his hair mussed and a little bit of drool leaking onto the notebook paper, or how it made his heart flutter that Hajime stayed here for him.

Hajime looks at his phone, checking the time. “It’s eleven-thirty pm.” 

He’s wrinkling up his forehead the way he does when he gets angry, and Tooru plasters on a self-righteous smirk. “Yes, well, I wouldn’t expect a caveman like you to— _ow!_ Iwa-chan, stop that, you’re going to break my arm!”

But really, there was a comfort seeing Hajime in the club room, waiting for him, and Tooru can’t deny it.

-

Third year rolls along, and it’s a normal day for the volleyball team. Balls are slamming onto the court until nightfall, and then eventually the team members leave, with only Tooru and Hajime staying behind—Tooru practicing in the gym and Hajime doing homework in the club room, waiting. 

Ten forty-seven and the door to the club room opens. Hajime looks up and Tooru has collapsed heavily on the doorframe, crying. Hajime realizes with a jolt that his knee is red and swollen.

Tooru sways, he’s suddenly in Hajime’s arms.

“Shittykawa, what did you do this time?”

All he can do is cry.

They stay there like this for a long time, Tooru crying into Hajime’s shoulder, Hajime holding him gently and running his hand through Tooru’s hair like he did when they were kids. 

Then Tooru begins to sob even harder, telling Hajime about how his injury will set him back, that he’ll never be as good as Kageyama or Ushijima—

“Shut up, Assikawa.”

But he doesn’t, and he keeps sobbing. 

“Iwa-chan, what if Kageyama comes to Aoba Johsai next year? He’ll replace me as the setter, I know it! I’ll never be good enou—“

Hajime kisses him, just to shut him up. It’s not perfect, Tooru’s crying, after all, and there’s snot and tears all over his face. But he tastes like mint and the tangerines he ate before practice, and his lips are impossibly soft from the chapstick he insists on using every day. 

Tooru shoves him away. 

They’re sitting on the ground, when did that happen? Hajime wonders vaguely, but all of his thoughts are racing. Why did he do that? What was he thinking?

Tooru slaps a hand over his mouth, face twisted in shock. 

“I-I’m going to call your sister. She’s got a car, she’ll drive you to the hospital.” Hajime says helplessly, walking out the door. 

Tooru’s injury sets him back for two weeks, and he returns more determined than ever. He finds that he and Hajime are drifting apart, and he tells himself it’s for the best, but he’s more lonely than he’s ever been, no matter how many girls he surrounds himself with. 

-

A year passes, Tooru and Hajime end up playing for the same volleyball team in college. But even though they’re so close, they’ve never been further apart.

Sometimes when he’s doing homework, or about to watch an alien documentary, or feeling bored on a Sunday morning, he’ll type a text to Hajime before remembering they don’t do that anymore. 

Now that they’re apart, he’s realizing how much he needs Hajime. It’s the little things, like how they always watched random movies or TV shows on Saturday nights with Hajime’s hands combing through his hair. It’s the big things too, like how he’d always call Hajime up when he had a nightmare and they’d stay up until the sun rose.

He doesn’t even know why he shoved Hajime away in the first place, now that he knows how much he needs him. 

But still, life goes on, and Tooru’s still flirting with girls and playing volleyball with ferocity and overworking himself just like always. He has friends too, Kuroo and Bokuto from his college volleyball team, and some others. But this time there’s no Hajime to stay with him when he stays late at the gym, or buy ice cream for him after bad breakups, or punch him when he’s being an idiot.

It’s his life, but Hajime’s no longer a part of it. 

-

They’re playing a practice match against another college. They won the first set, and but a close game, Tooru’s team barely in the lead.

Tooru sets the ball to Bokuto for a quick. He doesn’t set much to Hajime anymore, because their quick attacks have been suffering since the kiss. Setting to Bokuto is safer.

The score is 20-18 when it happens. Tooru tosses the ball up for yet another brutal jump serve. His knee throbs again as he prepares to jump, but he ignores it.

But he’s falling. Why is he falling?

Suddenly he’s on the ground. Did his knee give out on him? It hurts, he thinks vaguely. It hurts a lot. He registers the nausea, and he feels like crying, but everything’s dull. He can’t feel anything, really. 

Hajime’s there, helping him up, helping him walk like when they were kids and he fell off that tree in the park. Hajime’s gently sitting him down on the bench and everything’s the way it should be, back before—wait.

“Iwa-chan?” Tooru’s feelings rush back. Shock, misery, confusion, but maybe he’s a little happy, because it’s Hajime helping him. 

“Sorry, Tooru. I’ll go if you’re uncomfortable.” 

Tooru. Tooru, not Shittykawa, or Trashykawa, or any of the other horrible nicknames Hajime made up for him. And he’s apologizing, like it’s not Tooru he’s talking to, but a stranger. It hurts, Tooru thinks, more than anything, even his knee. 

“No, wait!” Tooru seizes hold of his wrist in a panic. 

“I want you to stay,” he mumbles, when Hajime looks at him.

Hajime pauses, and then he’s sitting down beside him, and Tooru wants to do something, anything, to make him stay a little longer. To stay forever. 

So he kisses him. It’s reckless, he knows it, and it can just as easily scare Hajime off as it can make him stay. Tooru’s nervous, but then he sees Hajime’s eyes flutter shut as he presses back.

It’s slow and hot and searing, and so, so right. He feels Hajime’s hands tangle in his hair, pulling him deeper, closer. He feels his own arms wrapping around Hajime’s waist, clutching him tightly because he never wants to let him go.

When they let go of one another, Tooru immediately begins to cry, and then he’s babbling through his tears.

“I want you to stay, Iwa-chan! I want you to stay so we can catch bugs together like when we were little and sit on your roof together when the Geminids are falling and share the same bed after we watch horror movies! I want to be with you again, and do things we haven’t done together yet, like hold hands and go on dates and slow dance together and move in together...I want you to kiss me again and I promise not to push you away again, I promise!”

And Tooru knows Hajime understands, because he says, “I need you too, Shittykawa.” 

Hajime smiles, and for Tooru, it’s the most beautiful thing in the world.

That’s all he has to say, all he has time to say really, before the doctor comes over and wants to look at Tooru’s knee. 

-

He has to take two weeks off, just like in high school, but maybe it’s not the worst thing in the world, because he has Hajime to buy him milk bread and kiss him and threaten to shove his crutches down his throat. 

When Tooru comes back, they’re playing a three-on-three match with the other members of the team. The sky is bright and full of hope, and Tooru wants to breathe it all in, because he’s back and things are better now. 

The game starts, and Tooru sets the ball to Hajime for the first time in months. Their quick is smooth and fluid and absolutely perfect. When the ball slams down onto the other side of the court, Tooru smiles.

”What?” Hajime asks him.

”Nothing,” Tooru says. 

“That’s bullshit, Shittykawa,” Hajime glares at him.

But really, they both know, this toss, this spike, this quick means everything.


End file.
